Ever been asked at checkout for your phone number? You
haven’t been in the store for a long time, if ever by your recollection, but
the clerk wants to know if you’re in the system. You provide a phone number and
surprise surprise you are in there! Phone number, name, and address. It’s
probably not a retail conspiracy to create a super database of shared data. What
it does reveal is how our lives and personal data are intertwined within the
world of information.
When information was written on paper there was less of it
and it was more fragile. Tear it up, burn it, poof it’s gone. Carbon paper,
mimeographs, and copy machines (Younger readers will have to look those up)
changed that. Documents were being copied and filed in triplicate. Computers,
of course, made it all easier but it wasn’t until the ol’ World Wide Web came
along that hiding in plain sight became difficult.
In the old days it was easy to disappear. You simply moved
to another town. Started using a new name and slowly built your new persona. As
technology progressed information began being stored on computers. Those
computers could be accessed for information stored about you, but only for the
specific information the entity had stored. Once computers became connected one
entity could access another’s information. Then they began sharing information
between each other and saving the data locally. The more digitally involved you
are the bigger your online presence. As young people enter adulthood they have
little to no digital footprint in the context of financial databases. What they
do have is a social footprint, more on that later.
Google yourself
Have you ever searched your name? If not, give it a try. You
might be surprised what pops up or how many of you are out there. The more you
are in the public eye the more information that is going to be out there and,
thus, the harder to clean up your online presence. A regular Joe should have
limited occurrences as the result of a search. But even regular Joe’s can have
an online presence depending on their interaction with social sites and images
associated to their name. And that is what you need to be controlled.
Information for sale
Think about the seed system of a watermelon. You can take
out a portion from the middle, but there are going to be all those strands
extending throughout the melon. That is how it is in the digital world. Things
truly do live forever on the Internet. You can have a record expunged from a
database, but any reference to or sharing of that record in other databases is
going to give it new life. Data has become a big commodity. Everything is for
sale on the Internet. Data is being collected on every interaction you have on
the Internet. The data collected by brick and mortar businesses is sought
after. Once government databases went online (real estate, court information,
etc) information brokers snatched up this data. All of this information is
bought and sold and resold. The original purveyor of the data may have deleted
it but the new entity has it saved and published it their own way.
Everyone that has data is looking for revenue sources,
especially governments. Data mining companies buy data from phone companies
(landline and wireless) and the government (real property and court records).
The information is legitimately offered for sale on the Internet through pay
sites or resold. Ever get those mailings and wonder how Joe Realtor knows how
long you’ve lived in your house and what you can sell it for?
Your Job image
Younger people may not be in databases for real estate or
financial institutions but they are using social media and sharing the media.
Even someone with little life experience will pop up in a simple Google search,
most likely under images. This is what haunts the 20-somethings when they start
their job searches. Over the last few years’ different surveys have revealed
that 40% of college admission offices and 40% of HR professionals research
social media regarding applicants. Staying aware of your online presence is
especially import when trying for a job.
Cleaning up online presence
You’re first step should be stop the flow of information.
Review and change your social media privacy settings. Remove information from
online shopping and other accounts that are old or unnecessary.
Whether it’s the garage, the basement, or the Internet
before starting any clean up job you have to assess the situation. Start by
searching your name and then different variations with your name, town,
occupation, and any other identifier that you feel has a strong attachment to
your name. Would suggest using Google as it is the most powerful, but using
other search engines wouldn’t hurt. You’ll probably get different results.
Make note of the sites in which you pop up and what they are
referencing. Find the source of the material you want removed and contact the
source directly. Many will want sound reasoning why the post/picture should be
removed. May want to read the companies privacy statements before you make the
call to know where you stand and/or how to make the request.
Even though the source removes the post once it has been
shared it lives on in other sites. You’ll have to track the posts digital trail
and contact those companies as well. The tedious part is finding every link
that’s associated with your name and going through the process each time. As
with any situation where you are fighting an issue Document Document Document.
Keep copious notes of your efforts in case you need to prove your attempts
later or make subsequent requests.
After all that you are still going to be able to “find
yourself” on government public access sites like real property and courts.
People search sites and phone number search sites sell the information you are
trying to keep private. Matters of public record like newspaper articles in
which you’ve been mentioned are going to pop up.
To get your name removed from marketing lists there are
organizations that can help. Similar to the national do not call registry,
these services allow consumers to opt of marketing offers. You would be adding
your name to another database, which may be counterproductive to what you’re
trying to accomplish, but it does keep marketers from contacting you. Maybe.
Who knows if it really works?
One such service is run by the Direct Marketing Association
and allows consumers to have their names and addresses removed from direct
marketing mailing lists. There is a fee-$2 for 10 years if you register online.
The site can be found at www.dmachoice.org. The second removes the consumer
from credit card and insurance offers. The service is provided in a joint
venture between Experian, Equifax, Innovis, and Transunion. The site can be
found at www.optoutprescreen.com.
You won’t be able to eradicate everything. If you’re serious
about removing yourself from the Internet you’ll have to have as much as
possible redacted. The rest will have to get buried in the voluminous amount of
data filling the Internet. The less that is out there the more specific the
search will have to be to find you. Not gone but harder to find.
Your personal information may be in myriad retail databases
but at least you can try to keep what others read about you to a minimum. You can’t
just completely disappear but can clean up your online presence so that you’re
not easily searched.
See our blog archive for more posts about online presence.
Should social media rants get you fired? March 2017
Social media checks July 2016
Convicted? Never convicted October 2014
